As I was reading two why choose fantasy romances by Sam Hall, Dragon Found and Dragon Fight, I was struck by the depth of the world building that went on. It was apparent that Hall has spent considerable time mapping out the history and culture of the land they are writing about, and that they really spent time fleshing out their characters (which, honestly, were tropes, but well done ones).
The inevitable comparison is obviously Game of Thrones, but with more sex and dragons. It’s very like GoT in terms of political machinations of great families, but instead of the dragons being few and far between, the army is made up of dragons and their mind-melded riders. The dragon riders are also the law keepers in times of peace.
Pippa, the female protagonist, is a lady of noble birth who has been brought low by her stepmother and stepsister. Her suitors are the dragon riders who save her from her dire circumstances. Which makes it sound like she’s helpless – she’s not, just really ground down by terrible circumstances. If she didn’t have a spine of steel, she’d probably have given up long ago.
I went through an Anne McCaffrey phase in middle school, so you can imagine how excited I was to come across Dragon Found and Dragon Fight. GoT without all the rape, but more dragons! Which is not to say there is no danger – the power games are real. And there are some things that are very obviously not right at the royal level.
All of which makes it even more unfortunate that I was distracted every 50 pages or so by a glaring editorial issue. And, look, I know my writing is not perfect, but I’m not paying someone to come behind me a clean it up either. It wasn’t just a homophone issue, but entire sentences that don’t make any sense. You can tell that they started out written one way, someone decided to re-word part of it, but then didn’t fix all of it to make it work as a complete thought.
The other thing that I was very disappointed by was the cover art. The female protagonist is described as being quite tall, with a square, boyish frame, a shaved head due to a lice issue, and easily mistaken as a male. This is the cover art of the two novels. This is most definitely not what was described.
I have read quite a few of Sam Hall’s books over the last month or so – mostly omegaverse or shifter why choose romances – and have really enjoyed them. If grammar issues make or break your enjoyment of a book, skip these two. If you can move past them and enjoy a good fantasy with a non-traditional romance, give these a try.
3.5/5 stars. Available on Kindle Unlimited.
